Delighted to have two poems published in The Gorko Gazette. My thanks to Editor Raddy. https://thegorkogazette.com/2025/03/12/its-so-quiet-and-1-more-by-strider-marcus-jones/
It’s So Quiet and 1 more by Strider Marcus Jones
It’s So Quiet
it’s so quiet
our eloquent words dying on a diet
of midnight toast
with Orwell’s ghost-
looking so tubercular in a tweed jacket
pencilling notes on a lung black cigarette packet-
our Winston, wronged for a woman and sin
rewrote history on scrolls thought down tubes
that came to him
in the Ministry of Truth Of Fools
where conscience learns to lie within.
not like today
the smug-sly haves say and look away
so sure
there’s nothing wrong with wanting more,
or drown their sorrows
downing bootleg gin
knowing tomorrows
truth is paper thin
.
at home
in sensory
perception
with tapped and tracked phone
the Thought Police arrest me
in the corridors of affection-
where dictators wear, red then blue, reversible coats
in collapsing houses, all self-made
and self-paid
smarmy scrotes-
now the Round Table
of real red politics
is only fable
on the pyre of ghostly heretics.
they are rubbing out
all the contusions
and solitary doubt,
with confusions
and illusions
through wired media
defined in their secret encyclopaedia-
where summit and boardroom and conclave
engineer us from birth to grave.
like the birds,
i will have to eat
the firethorn
berries that ripen but sleep
to keep
the words
of revolution
alive and warm
this winter, with resolution
gathering us, to its lantern in the bleak,
to be reborn and speak out the strip-malls and old powder shops. The grass grows
Five feet tall but only once. Then it’s sheared for the coyotes’
Convenience. Rabbits hide as long as they can, but I’ll tell you the same thing
I told them:
Don’t linger.
THE HEAD IN HIS FEDORA HAT
a lonely man,
cigarette,
rain
and music
is a poem
moving,
not knowing-
a caravan,
whose journey does not expect
to go back
and explain
how everyone’s ruts
have the same
blood and vein.
the head in his fedora hat
bows to no one’s grip,
brim tilted into the borderless
plain
so his outlaw wit
can confess
and remain
a storyteller,
that hobo fella
listening like a barfly
for a while
and slow-winged butterfly
whose smile
they can’t close the shutters on
or stop talking about
when he walks out
and is gone.
whisky and tequila
and a woman, who loves to feel ya
inside
and outside
her
when ya move
and live as one,
brings you closer
in simplistic
unmaterialistic
grooved
muse Babylon.
this is so,
when he stands with hopes head,
arms and legs
all aflow
in her Galadriel glow
with mithril breath kisses
condensing sensed wishes
of reality and dream
felt and seen
under that
fedora hat
inhaling smoke
as he sang and spoke
stranger fella
storyteller.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Honest Ulsterman; Poppy Road Review; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; A New Ulster; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
Trapped in Manufactured Time
by Strider Marcus Jones
so lost schooled-
but not a fool,
stands in cold sunshine
on golden heath
where no kings rule
and ancestors of cottons thief,
make poor ends meet for dirty dime-
trapped in manufactured time.
he sits
and fits
in the shadows of its shades
and lines
on Cribden hill-
where clouds spill
like wire brillowed blinds,
imagining a wintered witch
composing pagan spells and rhymes
with bones like martyred blades,
whose burned marrow curses
industrialists and tokened slaves-
to believe a full purse is
how life measures made.
the trees are gone,
and wandering tribes,
who worked and gathered everything as one-
now live down in gas warmed hives,
in settled serfdom’s
truths and lies.
Pyramid Prison
by Strider Marcus Jones
in detritus metronomes
of human habitation
the ghost of Shelley’s imagination
questions the elemental,
experimental
chromosomes
and ribosomes
of DNA,
reverse engineered
that suddenly appeared
as evolution yesterday.
her monster mirrors dark wells
of monsters in our smart selves,
the lost humanity and oratory
that fills laboratory
test tubes
with fused
imbued
genes
to dreams
of flat forward faster
distinction
to disaster
and barbarism’s
ectopic extinction.
this is our pyramid prison,
where all souls
and proles
climb the debased
opposite steps of extremism,
like Prometheus Unbound,
defaced
sitting around
the crouching sphinx
abandoned by missing links.
free masons of money and wars,
warp the alter of natural laws,
so reason withers
and wastelands rust
no longer rivers
of shared stardust
in the equal symphony of spheres
in space,
filling our ears
with subwoofer bass,
definitive
primitive
medieval
evil
waste.
The Dance
by Strider Marcus Jones
pull the roof off
knock the walls down
touch the forest
climb those mountains
and smell the sea
again.
watch how life
decomposes
in death
going back to land
to reform and be reborn
as something and someone else.
there’s no great secret to it all.
no need to overthink it through
food and shelter
fire and shamans
clothes and coupling
used to be enough
with musicians
artists
and poets
interpreting the dance.
then warriors with armies
religions with god
and minds buying and selling
stole the landscape
and changed time.
smash the windows
break down the doors
melt the keys
rub evil words from their spells
and puncture the lungs of their wheels
before they kidnap you from bed
call you dissident
hold you without charge
wheel you out on a stretcher
from waterboard torture
for years
without trial
in Guantanamo Bay.
they are selling
the sanctuary
we made
with our numbers
bringing back chains
making some of us slaves
outside the dance
in the five coloured rings
making winners
and losers
holding flags and flames.
The Powder of Patriotism
The powder of patriotism,
allows us to be herded,
like worker ants, and soldier ants,
and royal ants, who we don’t know-
perpetuate the status quo.
The powder of patriotism,
divides us into states,
where leaders owned by billionaires-
tell us who to hate.
The powder of patriotism,
ridicules the idea,
that missiles on our doorsteps
intensifies our fear.
The powder of patriotism,
makes men go to war:
but only those who send them-
know what it was for.
The Blood That Makes Us Black
imagine yourself,
in a photo-fit picture
with every nothing that’s new-
minus in health,
quoting icons and scripture
under the whole black and blue.
optimum dreams
turn out fake in the mirror
facing what’s been like fallen heroes-
in so many scenes
like a ghost who is giver
passing on wisdom, who knows-
the blood that makes us black
of two from one,
is schooled by fungus fortunes
and faiths old hat
to be sold on-
by suited gangs, making golden dunes.
So It Goes
when i look back
in a moment
of quiet acquired dignity
that comes to some
with age,
it is with patience,
for i was much the same
when everything seemed bigger
than it was
as uncertainty
wore the other shoe to confidence
and followed it step for step.
the energy of youth
that often acts
without respect and understanding-
to bluff and blag its way
in fashion and musical rebellion-
skips like stones
on the ponds of those who have it all
from Parliaments revolution-
but their ripples wane
through treacle trends
in this dumbed down democracy
soothed by drugs and drink.
apathy watches and laughs
at these new roundheads and royals-
jigging their booty
to tunes composed
by capitalist cavaliers-
wearing each despotic Emperor’s new clothes,
and a known assassins kiss of death
waits for anyone who questions-
so it goes.
On the Other Side of the Room’s Window
Dried coffee rings on the bedside table,
Where the martyr stubs his cigarette,
And disregards the opened volume
Of T.S. Eliot.
On the other side of the room’s window,
Buses shake past, but can’t be seen=
And when he calls for freedom,
The world spouts semen and war machines.
Cameras in the streets outside,
Watch this enemy within:
But how many Winston Smiths,
Are writing notes, and sneaking gin?
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA, The Stray Branch Literary Magazine, Crack The Spine Literary Magazine, The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.
Delighted to have these 2 love poems published by brilliant Editor Nolcha Fox in Chewers by Masticadores. Love the presentation.
2 Poems by Strider Marcus Jones
SO OPEN, BUT SO SILENT TO YOURSELF
so open, but so silent to yourself,
like missing books messing up a shelf-
some unfinished, the others read,
somewhere else in someone’s head.
reason is reluctant to be heard
in conscience corrupt by tyranny blurred-
so leave the breaks in moorland grass,
and bound
unfound
where hours don’t turn round
inside this glass
duplicity and old division
of curtained cell
instead of prism
equal and parallel-
go, go without trace
into uncovered space
revealing your own face.
***
VACANT ROOMS
take my thoughts with you,
as I cast them into the ocean,
and let the seagulls drown my words,
from cliffs where clouds sweep low.
wild, wind-swept spray, spits
at time turned rocks,
and stands them impotent too-
on sands that shift:
like truths, turned false and cut loose,
like flesh, that fades on a bone-bleached sky;
it hurts to set the past free-
and live in vacant rooms.
Copyright © 2025 Strider Marcus Jones
All Rights Reserved
Really chuffed to have these 4 love poems published by dedicated Editor Nolcha Fox in ChewersMasticadores. Love the presentation.
4 Love Poems by Strider Marcus Jones
NO ROADS
with no roads on our map of conversation,
we began
without plan,
and climbed, into the branches of imagination,
past the twigs and leaves-
those apothecaries
of lost libation,
into houred improvisation-
through its desert wanting rain
after years of stasis,
in a slow camel train
searching for that oasis-
with moving dunes
and negative runes
fending off the grey
in a charmed, nomadic way.
happen then, that this cold acoustic tune,
met your luteful lagoon
of mosaical notes-
and the baton moved,
as was proved
round the wheel with ambient spokes,
conducting without rules
our forgotten fools.
somehow,
go now,
through the eye of words,
to the heart of this rhythm
and the scion of its schism;
then home, like migrating birds
into separate nests-
for now, love rests.
***
SILHOUETTES OF LOVE AND LUST
i love to watch the chocolate
slowly melt
between your lips
of silky liquid felt,
then lick and lap
soft suck sips
in rhythm with your hips,
making such moments of motion
plough tidal waves in your ocean
as each surge of storm
throbs to be born
until the stone and dust
of autumn yellow moon
casts silhouettes of love and lust
that burst and bloom
through every love-soaked scented night
shuttered from politics so cocooned
in plutocracies of blight.
***
PULSATING FLOWERS
so define me
now you know
the nature of my ways.
understand me
somehow, slow-
love is more, than what it says:
frequent pulsating flowers,
pollening my hands and inky breath;
softening, those quiet hours
through life and death.
close-ups and downs
that fit together,
challenging the bounds
in bonds that stretch forever:
postures in sounds
and elemental words
of surprise and wit-
found in tea leaf grounds
that make reluctant lovers
come to it.
***
OUR TALK
the soft wind, stroking your smiling face,
fingers your fine combed hair, in out of place-
and i know
when you go
nothing can make this mood,
or give its famine food.
our talk, branching through woods and sky
like young leaves, suddenly knowing why-
they need the sun again
to be, and to remain-
more than a copied canopy
to reach the plain out to me.
i lounge, in your living words libation,
with uncommon nouns, uncovered in creation,
and wait for wantings i can be-
where complex minds dwell in that simplicity,
where feelings go to touch
and come to mean so much.
Copyright © 2025 Strider Marcus Jones
All Rights Reserved
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Poppy Road Review; The Galway Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
Thrilled to have my poem " The Mess of Thrown-off Clothes" published in the superb Issue 11 of Porch Literary Magazine. Thank you to the Editors and congratulations to all contributors. The Mess of Thrown-off Clothes – Porch Litmag
by Strider Marcus Jones
i listen
to your love beads glisten
in the flotsam
of my room-
we make them
from samurai sword folds
at forge and loom
in the mess of thrown off clothes.
so many smoke me kisses
at portal doors,
and mithril wishes
on primitive floors-
take us back again
through heath and fen
to imitate
lost landscape-
cycle
and circle
sky and stone
outside and home-
in love in less
with your heavenliness,
and loneliness
durable under duress.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine, Crack The Spine Literary Magazine, The Recusant, The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.
Delighted to have one of my Haiku in the Best of The Mainichi in Japan 2024. Many thanks to Dhugal J Lindsay.
https://cdn.mainichi.jp/.../20250210p2a00m0et001.../0.pdf...
Strider Marcus Jones (UK)
turning wheel of time
paddle steamboat roaming down
the Mississippi
June 1, 2024
Comment: We think back to the time of Tom Sawyer.
Delighted to have my poem The Door published by brilliant Editor Barbara Leonhard on the fabulous MasticadoresUSA Magazine site today. https://masticadoresusa.wordpress.com/2025/02/14/the-door-by-strider-marcus-jones/
“The Door” by Strider Marcus Jones
Posted by Meelosmomon
The Door
the door
between skyfloor
topbottom
is rankrotten
portalbliss
or abjectabyss.
it contains conversations
confrontations,
hiding loves two-ings
in lost ruins-
shuts us inside ourself
with or without someone else.
we,
the un-free,
disenfranchised poor
have no bowl of more-
only pain
on the same plain
as before,
homeless
or in shapeless boxes,
worked out, hunted, like urban foxes-
outlaws on common lands
stolen from empty hands.
files on us found
from gathering sound
where mutations abound
put troops on the ground.
Copyright © 2024 Strider Marcus Jones
All Rights ReservedStrider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has been published in over 200 publications worldwide including: Dreich Magazine; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rye Whiskey Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice.
Delighted to have my poem Trapped in Manufactured Time published in The Crossroads Literary Magazine. My thanks to Editor John Patrick Robbins. https://thecrossroadlitmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/01/trapped-in-manufactured-time-by-strider.html
TRAPPED IN MANUFACTURED TIME
so lost schooled-
but not a fool,
stands in cold sunshine
on golden heath
where no kings rule
and ancestors of cottons thief,
make poor ends meet for dirty dime-
trapped in manufactured time.
he sits
and fits
in the shadows of its shades
and lines
on Cribden hill-
where clouds spill
like wire brillowed blinds,
imagining a wintered witch
composing pagan spells and rhymes
with bones like martyred blades,
whose burned marrow curses
industrialists and tokened slaves-
to believe a full purse is
how life measures made.
the trees are gone,
and wandering tribes,
who worked and gathered everything as one-
now live down in gas warmed hives,
in settled serfdom's
truths and lies.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
Thanks to Editor Barbara Leonhard for publishing my poem The Other Self latinosenglishedition.wordpress.com/2025/01/28/t…
The Other Self
the other self
abstracted in the press
of turned down pages,
gets mucked up in the mess
and shows how unlaminated age is.
if nothing else-
these nude notes
being played behind the curtain
where the stage is,
by soloist strings
and hermit woodwinds-
are far hopes
of uncertain
opening chords
calling out
to the duet
i haven't come to yet.
and afterwards,
if all those afterwards
could talk and kiss and spout,
there would be
no more misery
move it out.
Copyright © 2025 Strider Marcus Jones
All Rights Reserved
***
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in over 200 publications worldwide including: Dreich Magazine; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rye Whiskey Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice.
Thrilled to have six of my poems published in this stunning issue 30 of 100Subtexts Magazine. Congratulations to editor John Hopper and all contributors. 100subtextsmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/01/100s…
Thrilled to have six of my poems in this stunning issue. Congratulations to editor John Hopper and all contributors. 100subtextsmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/01/100s…
NO ROADS
with no roads on our map of conversation,
we began
without plan,
and climbed, into the branches of imagination,
past the twigs and leaves-
those apothecaries
of lost libation,
into houred improvisation-
through its desert wanting rain
after years of stasis,
in a slow camel train
searching for that oasis-
with moving dunes
and negative runes
fending off the grey
in a charmed, nomadic way.
happen then, that this cold acoustic tune,
met your luteful lagoon
of mosaical notes-
and the baton moved,
as was proved
round the wheel with ambient spokes,
conducting without rules
our forgotten fools.
somehow,
go now,
through the eye of words,
to the heart of this rhythm
and the scion of its schism;
then home, like migrating birds
into separate nests-
for now, love rests.
SILHOUETTES OF LOVE AND LUST
i love to watch the chocolate
slowly melt
between your lips
of silky liquid felt,
then lick and lap
soft suck sips
in rhythm with your hips,
making such moments of motion
plough tidal waves in your ocean
as each surge of storm
throbs to be born
until the stone and dust
of autumn yellow moon
casts silhouettes of love and lust
that burst and bloom
through every love-soaked scented night
shuttered from politics so cocooned
in plutocracies of blight.
SO OPEN, BUT SO SILENT TO YOURSELF
so open, but so silent to yourself,
like missing books messing up a shelf-
some unfinished, the others read,
somewhere else in someone's head.
reason is reluctant to be heard
in conscience corrupt by tyranny blurred-
so leave the breaks in moorland grass,
and bound
unfound
where hours don't turn round
inside this glass
duplicity and old division
of curtained cell
instead of prism
equal and parallel-
go, go without trace
into uncovered space
revealing your own face.
OVIRI (The Savage-Paul Gauguin in Tahiti)
woman,
wearing the conscience of the world-
you make me want
less civilisation
and more meaning.
drinking absinthe together,
hand rolling and smoking cigars-
being is, what it really is-
fucking on palm leaves
under tropical rain.
beauty and syphilis happily cohabit,
painting your colours
on a parallel canvas
to exhibit in Paris
the paradox of you.
somewhere in your arms-
i forget my savage self,
inseminating womb
selected by pheromones
at the pace of evolution.
later. I vomited arsenic on the mountain and returned
to sup morphine. spread ointments on the sores, and ask:
where do we come from.
what are we.
where are we going.
FLOATY BOATY
old tracks and elven voices
through the ages clear,
echo those rejoices
then and now, not here.
into the West they went,
leaving behind her music and her scent
in the candle of her moon
and word warmed room
of silver branches-
where streams flow up
and starlight dances
over the cup
of cerebral foreplay
that makes the melancholy mundane day
go floaty boaty
on mental maps
where lips lapped
and tongue tip tapped
forward and back
on moist moaty-
a sensuous place, where conversations dream,
floated in speech bubbles above the scene,
anchored to each mouth and head-
stroking the music rising from the bed.
LOVE IS STRIPPED TO SHARING BREAD
we were kissing
and dancing
to a kitchen song,
talking with our wine
and smoking bong-
then you pushed your pierced pin
of forged fire
further in
the groove of my desire
with your tongue.
later,
up the creaking wooden escalator-
"let me do you" i said
peeling back your petals
with my voice:
love is stripped to sharing bread
abroad-in plain rooms-where Nora and Joyce
reject precious metals.
it brings to craggy green cliffs
that STILL talk-
of two minds, in the sea born mist
of one thought-
why should four legs walk
under clouds adrift.
glum damp rock moss cups
when we go to ground
under body musk
and pagan sound-
the meaning of the hour
when lit lusts flower
fills the air
everywhere
at last
and the future does not imitate the past.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine;The Recusant, The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.
Thrilled to have six poems featured in the wonderful Bold Monkey Review. Thankye to editor George Anderson. georgedanderson.blogspot.com/2025/01/feat...
Featuring: Strider Marcus Jones
CHANGELING TIMES
as these middle years back bleed,
the rags of old memories recede
into heirlooms handed on
forged in fondness, been and gone.
no time can turn back its mistakes
or mend the piece an action breaks,
to be the way it was before
its nature changed, to less, no more-
like fragments of the whole
tapestry, that reach out to find a role
in these changeling times
of lost roots and fading lines.
a trace of old hypnotic scent
and lived in words, now cold and spent,
separate in the centrifuge
of time through space and spinning blues.
the face and timbre of fate and facts
grow parallel and parallax,
when love leaves on opposite trains
in summer sun and grainy rains.
THE PATH, THE FENCE, THE FIELDS
we walk by the river
talking inside ourselves,
like rhapsodies in two reflections-
different, but the same.
the path, the fence, the fields-
unknown obstacles that stare
through then, and now, beyond-
have heard love chime before.
ahead the river breaks
going separate ways,
but we stick to the same side
in the willow woods
and farms of flooded fields-
with ascension stroking
each reaction
phosphorus in the rain.
ADUMBRATE LOVES SHALLOWS
goddess of the moon
fusion of light and shadow,
come now, light my room-
make darkness shrink and narrow.
gravitate to me
awake inside unnatural light,
half written, half unknown i be
eclipsed in doubt, but inward bright.
bring your blooms to this fallow bed
alone in fates sad stare,
wrap me in your ethereal thread,
to reset time and covet care.
adumbrate loves shallows
in my sanctum core,
where the pastels fade and pallow
without depth and shade on dwindling shore.
BOOTS OF HARLEY
this universe has no center
and you're not there.
this sun is only sunny on the hood-
its light can't bend more benter
to be fair
as time stops running rings in wood.
the floorboards creak
and pictures speak
when I stand in empty corners making room,
for ghosts that want to have my seat
when they come in from the street
after riding like Valhalla under sun and moon.
summer shoes,
with beards of barley
in their soley grooves-
still think they're boots of Harley
on electra glide down highway avenues-
with a woman's arms around my waist
singing Bob Marley
and promising me her taste.
foot down. legs braced-
rocking back the headboard on the bed and base
in the hanging of her breasts
where my head would rest,
her lips a vanished beauty of the past-
explode
unload
to this contrast-
that turns its empty pages in my head
unlit, as I lie in bed,
running out of Kerouac road-
i feel the beat
and go to sleep
with some more story told.
This Theatre of Show
i want to go
where love songs grow,
on the radio
into someone's heart.
i want to know
if i play too slow,
and fade before the glow
can flame and spark.
i mend a dream,
distil it, to mountains seen
through mind and eyes potcheen,
lotioned by loves mark;
with tongue dabbing gleam
in fast flowing stream
of sweet nectarine
from sun up through sun dark.
i want your glow
in the thoughts i know,
before they dim down low
and depart-
this theatre of show
above and below,
where we all act to know
our own part.
so many vines
in the times
i know,
grape, but fail to flower.
i taste their wine
in its summertime,
but show
i am just a shower.
The Mess of Thrown Off Clothes
i listen
to your love beads glisten
in the flotsam
of my room-
we make them
from samurai sword folds
at forge and loom
in the mess of thrown off clothes.
so many smoke me kisses
at portal doors,
and mithril wishes
on primitive floors-
take us back again
through heath and fen
to imitate
lost landscape-
cycle
and circle
sky and stone
outside and home-
in love in less
with your heavenliness,
and loneliness
durable under duress.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford,
England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of
Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of
The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smokey rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington
Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary
Magazine;The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3.
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